“Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“When did you get so smart?”
“Had nothing to do with you, that’s for damn sure.”
“Then you’re going to have to do the same.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Talk to Joe before we go. You can’t leave it like that, Ox.”
“I could,” I said. “Very easily.”
“You won’t.”
“How you figure?”
Gordo shrugged. “You love him.”
“He kept this from me.”
“He knew how you’d react.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
I glared at him. “You should have told me.”
He sighed. “Probably. Little late for that now. I’d forgotten how it’s different being in a pack. There’s free will, but it’s blended in with the wolves. He’s the Alpha. I have to listen to him.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Do you?”
I shook my head. “Not to take care of himself.”
Gordo patted my hand. “Good thing I’ll be there, then. And yeah, I think I do. He’s young. But then so was I when all this started. We have that much in common at least.”
“Is it enough?”
“We’ll see.”
We were quiet for a time. Then, just because I could, I said, “So essentially, you’re now the witch for a seventeen-year-old Alpha. Good job on that one.”
He snorted and shoved me hard. “Get the fuck outta here with that.”
“Dick.”
“Bitch.”
He laughed.
And maybe I did too. Just a little bit.
HE LEFT.
I waited for the wolves because I knew they’d come.
Carter and Kelly appeared first, ears flattened on their skulls, tails drooping between their legs. They lay down far enough away that I could only just make them out in the dark, but close enough that I could hear their little pleading whines, the little huffs of air.
When I didn’t scold them or send them away, they moved closer. And waited.
Closer. And waited.
It didn’t take long before they were lying pressed up against me on either side, heads resting on my chest, watching me with big eyes. Their ears twitched, listening to the sounds of the forest, but they didn’t look away.
“I’m mad at both of you.”
Kelly whined and pressed his nose against my chin.
“You’re both jerks.”
Carter huffed and put his paw on my hand.
“You need to take care of each other,” I told them. “And him. And if it looks bad, if it looks like the fight is too big, you take him and you come running. I don’t care if he’s the Alpha. Fight it. Fight him. You drag his ass if you have to. You get me?”
They flashed their orange eyes at me.
I heard them whispering in my head.
They said things like brother and love and please don’t be mad at us please don’t hate us please don’t leave us, and I didn’t have it in me to correct them.
I wasn’t leaving them.
They were leaving me.
CARTER WAS dozing.
Kelly’s tongue was lolling out of his mouth as I scratched his ears.
Mark and Elizabeth came then. Elizabeth was a wolf. Mark was not.
He walked next to her, nude, shoulders hunched slightly.
I felt Elizabeth, but it wasn’t like Carter or Kelly. It was waves of pain and grief. It was a terrible sadness. She wasn’t green. There was no relief in her. She was deep in her blue phase now, and I didn’t know if she’d come out of it.
She lay at my feet and closed her eyes.
It didn’t take her long to sleep.
Mark sat next to me.
He said, “She’s going to stay like that, I think. For a while.”
“As a wolf?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He said, “It’s easier to process things. We can remember most everything when we’re wolves, but it’s different. It’s baser. Complexities are harder to understand. We deal in broad strokes. We can see the shapes of things. It’s harder to be more specific. It’s her way of coping. The sadness of a wolf isn’t the same as the sadness of a human. Mostly.”
I understood what he was saying. And I thought maybe that sounded like cheating. “I’m not a wolf,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“And my heart is breaking.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t shift it away.”
“It’s not any easier to deal with, Ox. It just makes it easier to understand.”
“I don’t think I understand many things,” I admitted.
He said, “Neither do I” and “We’ll need you, you know” and “You’re very important to us.”
“Why?”
“Why are you important? Or why will we need you?”
“Yes.”
“We hurt, Ox,” he said. “Just like you. We may not understand your pain, but we feel it just the same. Everyone hurts differently. And when a pack member passes, especially when it’s the Alpha, there is this great hole that opens up like a chasm and we’re desperate to fill it. To make it disappear. Or at the very least to forget about it. Just for a little while. Whether it is to hide away in the forest at night—”
“Or to find the one that caused it in the first place,” I said.
He smiled quietly. “I told him not to, you know. Joe. I told him he was making a mistake.”
“Did he listen?”
“I’d like to think he did.”
“Not well enough.”
“It can be hard to hear what you don’t want to when you’re desperate and all you know is anger.”
“But it’s easier when we’re with each other. That’s what pack is supposed to be.”
Mark nodded. “Which is why we’ll both need you. And I hope you’ll need us. Because we’re here too, Ox. I promise you. We won’t leave you behind.”
I wanted to believe him.
I LEFT them in the woods.
Mark shifted and curled around Elizabeth. Carter and Kelly whimpered as I moved, but found solace with the rest of their pack. They knew where I was going. They thought they were going to give us the privacy we needed.
But they didn’t know what I was going to ask for.
Because I’d made up my mind.
My mother whispered, I’ll do right by you.
Thomas whispered, You protected your own. I am so very proud of you.
I thought maybe they walked with me through the forest, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I could tell the difference between memories and ghosts.
The threads between us were gone.
But my mother’s hand brushed against my ear, and I felt Thomas squeeze my shoulder.
I wasn’t dreaming because I hurt.
Joe was still in the office, sitting in his father’s chair, a faraway look in his eyes as he stared off into nothing. It was hard to believe that only a week had gone by since we went on our first date, that flare of bright and awkward hope that had been bursting in my stomach. It was hard to think about how he’d sat at our kitchen table, wearing his bow tie, talking to my mother like he could believe nothing else in the world but what he was asking for. Like I was something he could be proud of.